1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system such as a copying machine, a printer, or a facsimile, an abnormal state occurrence predicting method in the image forming apparatus, and a state deciding apparatus that decides a state of the image forming apparatus.
2) Description of the Related Art
In an image forming apparatus of an electronic photographing scheme, maintenance such as repair, and replacing consumable articles like toner and a photosensitive member needs to be performed. When a failure occurs, all or some of the functions of the apparatus must be stopped until repair is finished, and a user has to suffer a time loss. Therefore, if an occurrence of an abnormal state such as occurrence of a failure, or the need for replacing a unit or parts is predicted, and if necessary maintenance is performed in advance, the down time can reduce.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-175328 discloses a conventional method of predicting occurrence of an abnormal state such as the failure, the end of life of a spare part, or the like. This method performs a statistic process, analogism, or the like to pieces of information such as sensing information detected by various sensors arranged in the image forming apparatus.
However, the above method can predict the possibility of occurrence of an abnormal state, but cannot predict a time for occurrence of the abnormal state. If the time for occurrence of the abnormal state in the image forming apparatus can be predicted, maintenance can be performed at appropriate time depending on the degree of urgency of maintenance. Therefore, it is desired to predict, not only the possibility of occurrence of an abnormal state in the image forming apparatus but also a time when the abnormal state might occur.